No matter how fast she could run or how far she could jump, Marion Jones has always seen herself as something of a victim.

If it wasn't the steroid police who were trying to do her in, it was the sports media. Or, perhaps it was the men in her life who kept making her look bad. Both her ex-husband and ex-boyfriend were banned from track and field for using illegal performance-enhancing drugs, while a coach she hired several years ago happened to be the same fellow who supervised Ben Johnson's steroid use in the 1980s.

Whatever it was, whatever she did, one thing was crystal clear to Marion Jones: It never was her fault.

So now comes a story from the Los Angeles Times that the three-time Olympic gold medalist who once commanded $70,000 to $80,000 a race is heavily in debt and down to her last $2,000.

This news has bubbled to the surface because Jones decided to file a breach-of-contract suit in 2005 against another of her coaches, Dan Pfaff, who coached her in 2003 and 2004. Unfortunately for Jones, the suit didn't go quite as planned. Pfaff denied any wrongdoing, according to the Times, and countersued for money he said Jones owed him. A Texas arbitrator ruled in favor of Pfaff, who won a judgment against Jones for about $240,000 in unpaid training fees and legal expenses.

Pfaff still is trying to collect his money, but because Jones, 31, says she has lost almost all of what once was a multimillion-dollar fortune, he's not having an easy time of it.

Then again, because this is a story about Jones, nothing is ever quite what it appears to be.

"You made some good money. Where did that money go?" asked the coach's attorney, Eric Little, according to the Times.

"Who knows?" Jones replied. "I wish I knew. Bills, attorney bills, a lot of different things to maintain the lifestyle."

That's the Marion Jones we know and love. In a nutshell: Not my fault.

Interestingly, Steve Riddick, Jones' most recent coach, said he noticed Jones was driving a Porsche sport-utility vehicle to their 2006 practices. "I didn't see any signs that she was struggling," Riddick told the Times.

It is true that Jones has endured a stunning fall from grace over the past few years, much if not all of it self-induced. Last year, she said, a bank foreclosed on her $2.5 million "dream home" in Chapel Hill, N.C.

This year, Jones sold two other North Carolina houses, including one where her mother lived, to raise "money to pay bills," she said.

If medals were given out in the category of "Most legal trouble for a U.S. Olympian since Tonya Harding," Jones likely would have wrapped up the gold long ago. It's really quite sad, considering what Jones once had as one of the most marketable athletes in the world, and what she now has frittered away.

She has been involved in a torrent of litigation since 2003, when she was linked to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) after a federal raid. BALCO is the place where Barry Bonds said in leaked grand jury testimony that he received substances that we now know to be illegal performance-enhancing drugs. One would have to have been born yesterday to not believe Jones did the exact same thing.

She certainly has the cadre of attorneys to prove something was amiss. She had to hire lawyers for her BALCO grand jury testimony, for negotiations with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in her fight to avoid being banned from competition, for a defamation lawsuit she filed against BALCO founder Victor Conte after he said she took performance-enhancing drugs and for her suit against Pfaff.

Last year, Jones found herself in even more trouble when a urine sample tested positive for the performance-enhancing drug EPO, although she later was cleared when a backup sample tested negative. Throughout it all, she has maintained her innocence.

Three years ago at the U.S. Olympic trials, in the midst of the BALCO controversy, Jones made a habit of avoiding reporters at every turn. Her behavior dismayed many in her ratings-starved sport, including the legendary Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who once gave an interview while being wheeled out of a stadium on a stretcher. "You don't want people to just remember this after all the wonderful things she has done in her career," Joyner-Kersee said in 2004.

Unfortunately for Jones, the same is true this year. All her trouble is exactly what people will remember, even if she might think none of it is her fault.

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